With the growth of computer and information systems, and related network technologies such as wireless and Internet communications, ever increasing amounts of electronic information are communicated, transferred and subsequently processed by users and/or systems. As an example, electronic mail programs have become a popular application among computer users for generating and receiving such information. With the advent of the Internet, for example, exchanging e-mail has become an important factor influencing why many people acquire computers. Within many corporate environments, e-mail has become almost a de facto standard by which coworkers exchange information. However, with the heightened popularity of e-mail and other information transfer systems, problems have begun to appear in regard to managing and processing increasing amounts of information from a plurality of sources.
Among these problems, many users now face a deluge of e-mail and/or other information from which to sort through and/or respond, such that the capability of being able to send, receive and process information has almost become a hindrance to being productive. For example, some users report receiving over 100 e-mail messages a day. With such large numbers of e-mail and other electronic information, it has thus become difficult to manage information according to what is important and what is not as important without substantially expending valuable time to make a personal determination as to the importance. As an example of these determinations, users may have to decide whether messages should be responded to immediately, passed over to be read at a later time, or simply deleted due to non-importance (e.g., junk mail).
Some attempts have been directed to information management problems. For example, attempts have been made to curtail the amount of junk or promotional e-mail that users receive. Additionally, some electronic mail programs provide for the generation of rules that govern how e-mail is managed within the program. For example, a rule providing, “all e-mails from certain coworkers or addresses” are to be placed in a special folder.
These attempts at limiting certain types of information, however, generally are not directed at the basic problem behind e-mail and other information transfer/reception systems. That is, conventional systems often cause users to manually peruse and check at least a portion of some if not all of their received messages in order to determine which messages should be reviewed or further processed. As described above, this takes time from more productive activities. Thus, with the large quantities of information being received, there is a need for a system and methodology to facilitate efficient processing of electronic information while mitigating the costs of manual interventions associated therewith.